You will seldom find a double letter combination in Polish – no ll as in Miller, no nn as in Hermann, no oo as in root.

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Common problems arise from the diacritic ł and Ł. This is actually an L with a slash or stroke. It is found in both upper and lower case. It is commonly transcribed incorrectly to the letter T or t. One of the best ways to distinguish ł from t is that the stroke of the ł is frequently very high or above the letter. As in the sample images.

• Władysław is commonly misspelled to Wtadystaw when transcribing.

Ƶ is not a regular alphabet letter in Polish but is a European style of writing the letter Z. It should be keyed as the letter Z. However, note that Ƶ is commonly transcribed incorrectly to the letter F.

UPDATE: The International Characters in the keying tool now support the kropka ( Ż ) Please only use the keying tool to enter this character.Polish has a special diacritic that is not currently in the International Characters dialog of the Keying Tool. This is being remedied but in the meantime should you find a record that contains a kropka (ż), you will need to copy and paste it from this page into the keying tool.

The International characters dialog with Polish letters highlighted in green, and look-alike mistakes struck through with a red x.